


it's a common misconception that this is the most wonderful time of the year

by pilynator



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, These two are ridiculous, generic winter holiday shenanigans, it's technically a christmas fic, with minimal xmas specific mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 20:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17148608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pilynator/pseuds/pilynator
Summary: The one where mistakes are made. Saeyoung and MC enjoy a very frozen Christmas and Saeran should have been more specific.For the 2k18 Mystic Messenger Secret Santa~ Enjoy!





	it's a common misconception that this is the most wonderful time of the year

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh, it's finally here!! Some seasonal greetings and good wishes to you all~
> 
> Anubis, I hope this satisfies your very cute request <3

The sky blanketed the sky with a heavy silence, shimmering gently where the muted city glow was met with clouds. It wasn’t snowing now, although there was a somewhat thin layer of it coating the ground and dusting the topside of observation point’s railing. The air was sharp, stinging, and carried the promise of even more seasonally appropriate weather, and the implicit threat that this was an unforeseen lull in activity. And it was dark, the horizon a comfortable plush sparsely interrupted by pinpricks of light.

It was quite pretty, she thought, although Saeyoung’s mild grumbling indicated that he’d had other plans in mind. The girl stuck out her tongue in a weak attempt at catching an errant snowflake but had to admit defeat when none obliged.

‘It’s not going to work.’ Saeyoung had snuck up behind her, carrying a massive shawl in one hand and a thermos in another. ‘We’re bereft this year, absolutely destitute.’

‘Bereft? Bereft of what? Have you been hanging out with Jumin again?’ She eyed the thermos, desperate for something warm. ‘And is that a delicious winter treat for the destitute I see there?’

‘Snow bereft.’ There was a pouty note in Saeyoung’s voice, but mostly quiet resignation. ‘And maybe.’ He scooted next to her spot against the railing and draped the shawl over her, hand brushing against the back of her neck in its retreat. It left a small ripple of warmth and she tried fruitlessly to lean into his frame.

‘Maybe what?’ She was still trying to create an undignified huddle, but Saeyoung had retreated slightly in the direction of the car, thermos still in hand. ‘Maybe as in, yes, you’ve been hanging out with Jumin, or maybe as in – there might be delicious treats in store for the snowless?’

‘First of all –‘ Saeyoung’s retreating form made it hard to make out the rest of that sentence, but she was pretty sure it went something like _how dare you assume I can’t be overdramatic on my own_. He was rummaging in the back of the car for something ( _red Herrari, for a special night_ ), the top of his head barely visible in the semi-obscurity decking the observation point. When he re-emerged, another container had been added to thermos, as well as a second shawl – all precariously balanced on one arm. ‘Secondly, there might – heavy emphasis on the might, princess – _might_ be a winter treat made available to the destitute, but you’ll have to pay your taxes first.’

He did hand the thermos over. Eventually. Not before the traditional dangling and fruitlessly jumping up and down to reach it dance had been performed for the benefit of a very distressed sounding pigeon on one of the benches nearby.

“Just for once, I wish you’d give me things at ground level, you know?” she grumbled. It was nothing more than token resistance, but appearances had to be kept up. It was hard to be annoyed with anything Saeyoung did these days. He smiled too much. It was like trying to be angry at the sun.

“I could get you a step ladder,” he suggested, taking up a spot on the bannister and wrapping the second shawl around himself in a double loop. The general effect was that of a very excited tomato peeking from a burrito wrapping. It made her feel excessively sentimental, like she was going to burst at the seams with affection. “Build it on top of RoboCat, maybe? No,” Saeyoung was now waving what turned out to be a spoon at the sky, “propulsion engines!”

“Absolutely not, you know I don’t have the core strength for that.”

“I didn’t say two engines, did I? You deserve at least six, for maximum comfort and balance. One for each limb and two on the back, what do you say?”

It was tempting.

“You think of everything, don’t you?” Saeyoung beamed at that, the very picture of chest-swelling pride and personal satisfaction with a cat-patterned wool shawl on. It was a very specific niche to cover, but he was doing his best at it.

They settled in a comfortable silence, both preoccupied with their respective treats, and she made an attempt at opening the thermos. It was a bit more complicated than it should have been, given that her fingers had gone slightly numb, but after a couple of seconds the lid finally gave way and the steam hit the girl square in the face. It was sweet and slightly artificial, the olfactory signifier of winter holidays across the world. “Hot chocolate?”

Saeyoung turned on his heel. His back was now leaning against the bannister and he was making a show of leaning back as far as he could, spoon pointed heavenward with a flourish. “The hottest. Hotter than jet fuel.” He was laughing, but stopped as soon as she yelped in consternation, reaching out to tug on his shoulder and pull him back from his precarious perch. “Sorry.” He sounded earnest. “I got caught up in the moment.”

“I know.” Their hands met in the middle, crossed that gulf like they had so many times. Neither were wearing gloves, and she let her fingers trace the familiar lines of Saeyoung’s skin.

They were interesting hands, she’d decided after their first month of dating. She hadn’t given much thought to it during the mad dash for Saeran, but once things had settled into a kind of groove – or an extremely shallow riverbed, at least, something to wear out in time – there had been a lot of time left for contemplation. The hands had been one of those things that had ended up becoming a full stop in her mental picture of Saeyoung, an anchor to centre and give shape to the whole.

She’d expected them to be soft. Office work rarely lent itself to harshness and for all the mental stress and occasional field outing, Saeyoung’s stint with the agency had been a cramped, frantic, chair-bound affair. It shouldn’t have left a lasting impression on anything other than his spine and yet here they were: those peaks and valleys in there that lent themselves so well to touching. She’d found out later it had been the result of years of tinkering with engines, circuits, assorted hardware – a testimonial to the points where he’d battered himself against endless side projects and distractions.

The marks had receded a bit since Saeran, but not enough to flatten his palm. There was, after all, more time than ever to sink into hobbies, more toys to design, more circuitry to smooth out. She’d forget to check his hands for a couple of hours and it would be a new experience all again, with some different cut or life line to explore. They were good hands. This is why she made sure to check up on them often. You know. For science.

It was around this time that she allowed herself a glance sideways only to discover that Saeyoung was now cheerfully attempting to shove his mysterious spoon into a tub of ice cream.

‘What – what are you doing?’

He blinked the slow guilty blink of someone who really doesn’t want to answer that question but must by necessity since they’ve been caught doing something inadvisable. Saeyoung had a particularly charming twist on this old classic – his blink tended to slip into a toothy grin at the end as soon as he accepted the inevitability of it all.

‘Eating ice cream.’

‘Right.’ He held her gaze defiantly, even as the spoon bounced back sadly against the frozen surface of dessert. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I phrased that right. _Why_ are you eating ice cream in the middle of winter?’

Saeyoung’s reply was mumbled, made even more incomprehensible by the pathetic sound of small chocolate chip pieces refusing to dislodge, but ‘Saeran’ eventually floated out from the otherwise garbled explanation. ‘I think he thought we were having a picnic?’ he finished meekly.

‘Oh.’ The wave of affection returned with a vengeance, heating up her face in response. ‘That was very sweet of him.’

‘Yeah.’

They stared at each other, unsure of how to proceed. She coughed and shuffled her feet, trying to find a good angle to attack the problem.

‘Can’t we…save it for later?’

‘Do _you_ want to be the one to tell Saeran we didn’t want his gift?’

An apocalyptic vision of Saeran’s _definitely not hurt what are you talking about why would I even care if you eat something I gave you_ face floated briefly at the front of her mind and immediately sank back to whatever cursed depths it had emerged from in the first place, where it was promptly filed into her ‘things that shouldn’t exist’ folder. She squared up her back, her decision made.

‘Do you have another one of those spoons?’

* * *

 

It took them two hours and a lot of determined hacking hit the bottom of the tub. Like Michelangelo, they had removed the irrelevant parts until the core had been revealed. It was this: to make sure Saeran’s gift was appreciated in full.

It wasn’t the romantic, snowy getaway Saeyoung had apparently planned for the evening, but it was warm and charming and incredibly stupid, which was really the same thing if you bothered to break it down to its essentials. It had made her feel incredibly grateful to be outside, in the below zero temperature, shovelling inadvisable quantities of snow in her mouth despite her body’s protests. Anything that could overtake her natural self-preservation instincts with was worth doing, she figured. On the way home, she’d shared this thought with Saeyoung and he used the next red light as to plant a big kiss on the top of her head.

‘That’s the kind of thing that makes me think you’d be interested in six propulsion engines.’

‘That’s not true,’ she protested, ‘that was when I told you the flamethrower was the best part about that robot dog. You said so.’ The shock of being back inside the protective belly of the car was dulling her senses and grinding them down to a pleasant hum, but misinformation needed to be corrected.

‘That too, but mostly the recklessness.’ The travelled in silence for the next couple of minutes. The street left mesmerising rivulets of light across the condensation on the windows and she could feel consciousness slipping away from her.

‘Name one reckless thing I’ve done.’

‘Following strangers to weird apartments?’ She didn’t have to look up to know that Saeyoung was already grinning.

‘You’ll never let that go, huh?’ She’d meant for it to be teasingly dismissive, but her sleepiness had seeped through the cracks and turned it into a whine.

Saeyoung seemed to find it endearing. He laughed his softest laugh, the one he reserved for when he was feeling particularly sentimental. It was parts wistful and shy and vulnerable. It was captivating, although, of course, that could have just been the glacial pace at which her thoughts were currently moving making her stare.

It took a while for Saeyoung to speak again. He said: ‘Nope, and I’m not letting you go either.’ It was the last thing she heard before the blissful unconsciousness of sleep overtook her entirely.

* * *

 

In the end, they were bedridden for two weeks with sore throats so horribly inflamed that they both had trouble with doing anything much other than sipping on tea through straws.

Saeran had not been amused.

( _“What do you mean you both ate ice cream in the snow? Who does that?”_

_“Well, why did you give it to me, then?”_

_“For later, you idiot!”_

_“What do you mean for later?”_

_“For later! As in, when you were back. Home. Inside. **Not out, in.** ”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Why would I ever tell you to eat ice cream in the cold?”_

_“I don’t know! I thought you knew what you were doing!”_

_“I didn’t think I’d have to specify that you shouldn’t eat ice cream in the cold??”_ )

Saeran had avoided them for the most part, claiming that he didn’t want to catch the stupid off them, but he did make sure they had all the hot drinks they needed and even joined them on couch for a Christmas movie marathon. The far end of the couch, with a germ mask and three layers of progressively more festive sweaters thrown on, but the intent was there. Saeyoung couldn’t have asked for a better gift.


End file.
